Alison Marjorie Ashby

Sturt's Desert Pea - painting by Alison Ashby

Acacia ashbyae

Alison Marjorie Ashby (7 February 1901 – 12 August 1987) was an Australian botanical artist and plant collector.

Life

Ashby was born in Adelaide, South Australia, daughter, and youngest of four children, of property developer and naturalist Edwin Ashby and his wife Esther. In 1902 the family moved to a Blackwood farming property called Wittunga at the foot of the Adelaide Hills, part of which later became the Wittunga Botanic Garden. Handicapped by shyness, a bad stutter and hypothyroidism, she was mainly educated at home. Encouraged by her father, she took an interest in native plants and began painting wildflowers.^[1]

From 1944, after both her parents had died, Ashby began to make longer trips to collect plants as specimens for various herbaria and also to propagate from seeds and cuttings. She was an active member of the South Australian branch of the Society for Growing Australian Plants. From 1963 to 1977 she made regular car journeys each year to collect and illustrate plants, driving to Southwest Australia in the winter and to the Australian Alps in the summer. In 1972 she moved to Victor Harbor where she died in 1987.^[1]

Ashby's inherited section of her family's Wittunga property was donated to the National Trust of South Australia in 1957 and became the 32 ha Watiparinga Reserve. Her 1500 botanical paintings were mostly donated to the South Australian Museum and are now held in the State Herbarium. Plants named in her honour include Acacia ashbyae and Solanum ashbyae.^[1]

Honours and awards

• MBE (1960)
• Australian Natural History Medallion (1975)

References